Huawei AI-enabled smart speaker announced

Dynamic District

October 27, 2018

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During the China launch of the Mate 20 series, Huawei also announced an AI-enabled smart speaker for the Chinese market.

It’s not hard to figure out that this device strikingly resembles the Apple Home Pod. The Huawei speaker also has an Echo-esque LED ring on top with four control buttons – volume up, volume down, mic mute and call receive. When connected to a phone, the device can directly take calls.

The Huawei AI speaker boasts the company’s ‘Histen’ tuning. The audio is provided by a 10W speaker by the Danish brand Dynaudio. The speaker makes use of a 2.25-inch sound driver. Also built-in is the ability to recognise different users by their voices.

Unlike other smart speakers which are powered by Alexa or Google Assistant, the Huawei AI speaker uses a Chinese voice assistant called Xiaoyi.

Huawei has priced the device super competitively at CNY 399, which roughly converts to Rs 4,000 or US $58. It’s quite certain that this device will remain limited to the Chinese market. In global markets, Huawei sells another Google Assistant-powered speaker called the AI Cube.